begin quote from:
The Wall Street Journal has fired longtime foreign affairs correspondent Jay Solomon …
Wall Street Journal Fires Reporter Jay Solomon For Alleged Spy Plane Deal
“I clearly made mistakes in my reporting and entered into a world I didn’t understand,” Solomon said
MSNBC
The
Wall Street Journal has fired longtime foreign affairs correspondent
Jay Solomon for what it said was a violation of “his ethical obligations
as a reporter.”
The paper announced the move minutes before The Associated Press reported that Solomon was offered
a 10 percent stake in a company headed by a news source ― an
Iranian-born businessman who was once an arms dealer with CIA ties.
Among the ventures Solomon discussed was a $725 million contract that
would allow surveillance planes to spy inside of Iran, according to AP.
AP
said it could not confirm whether Solomon received money from Farhad
Azima, the businessman, or accepted a stake in his company, Denx LLC.
Denx ceased operations last year, according to AP.
Solomon’s
firing ― and the idea that a reporter could have positioned himself to
collect more than $70 million in a shady international arms deal ―
seemed straight out of Hollywood, and immediately sent shockwaves
through journalism circles.
Solomon
denied any business venture with Azima. “I clearly made mistakes in my
reporting and entered into a world I didn’t understand,” he told the AP
on Wednesday. “I never entered into any business with Farhad Azima, nor
did I ever intend to. But I understand why the emails and the
conversations I had with Mr. Azima may look like I was involved in some
seriously troubling activities.”
The
Wall Street Journal told HuffPost that Solomon was no longer employed
by the paper and said it was conducting its own investigation into the
allegations.
“We
are dismayed by the actions and poor judgement of Jay Solomon,” a
spokesman for the paper said. “The allegations raised by this reporting
are serious. While our own investigation continues, we have concluded
that Mr. Solomon violated his ethical obligations as a reporter, as well
as our standards. He has not been forthcoming with us about his actions
or his reporting practices and he has forfeited our trust.”
Paul
Beckett, the Journal’s Washington bureau chief, notified staff
Wednesday afternoon that Solomon was fired following ethical violations,
but did not go into great detail, according to sources. He informed
staffers that publication of an AP story was imminent.
The
Associated Press obtained tens of thousands of Azima’s emails that
include communications between the businessman and Solomon. The AP also
obtained an March 2015 operating agreement for Denx, which listed “an
apparent stake for Solomon.”
AP
reported that Solomon’s early email conversations with Azima appear
aimed at cultivating him as a source. But the emails suggest their
relationship evolved.
“Our
businessman opportunities are so promising,” Solomon texted Azima in
October 2014, the AP reported. Later that month, Solomon asked Azima if
he had mentioned their business plans to a mutual friend. “Hell no!”
Azima wrote.
The
next year, Azima wrote Solomon to discuss a $725 million contract with
the United Arab Emirates that would allow surveillance planes to spy
inside of Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Azima, a U.S. citizen and an
aviation magnate, asked Solomon to float the idea with the UAE
government at an upcoming lunch, according to an April 2015 email
obtained by the AP.
“We
all wish best of luck to Jay on his first defense sale,” Azima wrote to
Solomon and two of his business partners ― former CIA officers Gary
Bernsten and Scott Modell.
Before
Deux was shuttered, its partners considered a scheme to instigate
regime change in Kuwait, AP reported. It’s unclear if they acted on the
plan.
Solomon,
who had been nominated by the Journal for multiple Pulitzer Prizes, led
the paper’s coverage of secret negotiations that culminated in a
nuclear agreement between Iran, the U.S., and five world powers. In a
book published last year, Solomon criticized the nuclear accord, arguing
that “rather than calming the world’s most combustible region, [it]
risks inflaming it.”
Investigators
in the U.S. and abroad are now probing whether Azima, in a separate
deal, violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by bribing an Emirati
official to profit from a hotel sale in Tbilisi, Georgia, AP reported on Tuesday.
Azima
has a decades-long history of questionable business deals. But until
recently, he evaded law enforcement, in part because of past work with
the CIA.
Jeffrey
Fegley, a former employee of Azima’s airline, Global Airways, described
himself to AP as “the guy who filled up the briefcases with $100,000
worth of small bills so you could bribe the ground crew to get your
cargo unloaded in a foreign land.” When AP pressed Fegley on who Global
Airways’ clients were, he named the CIA.
Azima’s
CIA connections later served him when prosecutors began investigating a
Kansas bank in the 1980s with possible mob ties. Azima was one of the
bank’s directors, but he was off-limits to law enforcement, a retired
prosecutor told AP.
“It became apparent that we were not able to pursue prosecution of Azima, Lloyd Monroe said.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
No comments:
Post a Comment